The complete software developer's guide to surviving projects that are "doomed to fail." In the course of a career, practically every software developer and manager will encounter projects with outrageous staffing, scheduling, budgeting, or feature constraints: projects that seem destined to fail. In the wake of re-engineering, such "Death March" projects have become a way of life in many organizations.

• Surviving projects that are "doomed to fail" !
• Negotiating the best deal up-front.
• Managing people and setting priorities.
• Choosing tools and technologies.
• When it's time to walk away.

Now, best-selling author Edward Yourdon brings his unique technology and management insights to the worst IS projects, showing how to maximize your chances of success-and, if nothing else, how to make sure your career survives them.

Yourdon walks step-by-step through the entire project life cycle, showing both managers and developers how to deal with the politics of "Death March" projects-and how to make the most of the available resources, including people, tools, processes, and technology.

Learn how to negotiate for the flexibility you need, how to set priorities that make sense-and when to simply walk away. Discover how to recognize the tell-tale signs of a "Death March" project-or an organization that breeds them.

If you've ever been asked to do the impossible, Death March is the book you've been waiting for.

Contents

• Introduction
  • Death March Defined
  • Categories of Death March Projects
  • Why Do Death March Projects Happen?
  • Why Do People Participate in Death March Projects?
• Politics
  • Identifying the Political "Players" Involved in the Project
  • Determining the Basic Nature of the Project
  • Levels of Commitment By Project Participants
  • Analyzing Key Issues that Lead to Political Disagreements
• Negotiations
  • Rational Negotiations
  • Identifying Acceptable Trade-offs
  • Negotiating Games
  • Negotiating Strategies
  • What to Do When Negotiating Fails
• People in Death March Projects
  • Hiring and Staffing Issues
  • Loyalty, Commitment, Motivation, and Rewards
  • The Importance of Communication
  • Team-Building Issues
  • Workplace Conditions for Death March Projects
• Death March Processes
  • The Concept of "Triage"
  • The Importance of Requirements Management
  • SEI, ISO-9000, and Formal vs. Informal Processes
  • Good Enough Software
  • Best Practices and Worst Practices
  • Death March Meets XP
• The Dynamic of Processes
  • Models of Software Development Processes
  • Visual Models
  • An Example : Tarek Abdel-Hamid's Software Process Model
• Critical-Chain Scheduling and the theory of Constraints
  • Introduction
  • What Organizational Behaviors are Dysfunctional ?
  • How Can We Change Dysfunctional Organizational Behavior ?
  • Life in a Rational World
  • Critival-Chain Scheduling
  • Conclusion
• Time Management
  • The Impact Of Corporate Culture on Time Management
  • Time Slippage From Stakeholder Disagreements
  • Helping the Porject Team Make Better Use of Time
• Managing and Controlling Progress
  • The "Daily Build" Concept
  • Risk Management
  • Additional Ideas for Monitoring Progress : Milestone Reviews
• Death March Tools and Technology
  • The Minimal Toolset
  • Tools and Process
  • Risks of Choosing New Tools
• Simulators and "War Games"
  • Introduction
  • The Concept of "War Games"
• Index